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Context: Hisense is presently defending against assertions of video standard-essential patents (SEPs) by Nokia (September 10, 2025 ip fray article) as well as contributors to Access Advance’s High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC, H.265) pool such as Korea’s Electronic and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) (August 18, 2025 ip fray article).
What’s new: As we just found out, Hisense is suing HEVC Advance licensors Dolby, GE, JVC, Philips, NEC, Mitsubishi, ETRI, Huawei, IP Bridge and Sun Patent Trust in a São Paulo (Brazil) court, seeking declaratory judgment (DJ) of non-infringement of HEVC patents. This is an unusually sweeping DJ campaign.
Direct impact:
- The equivalent court in Rio de Janeiro is far more experienced with SEP matters, raising the question of whether Hisense purposely sought out a different venue.
- Brazil is a major market for Hisense’s TVs, and apparently Hisense was afraid of preliminary injunctions (PIs).
Wider ramifications: While there is not much cellular SEP litigation going on (as we reported earlier today, Chinese automaker BYD has just settled the dispute with IP Bridge and possibly all other Avanci licensors with respect to at least 4G patents), multimedia SEPs are increasingly being enforced in court. Through its defensive carpet bombing and refusal to take licenses, Hisense contributes to the growth of the global video SEP docket.
All of the defendants to Hisense’s Brazilian DJ campaign are HEVC Advance licensors, though it is worth noting that GE’s relevant patents belong to Dolby now, which is why GE is no longer an Advance licensor in its own right. Maybe Hisense picked the targets based on who brought HEVC infringement lawsuits in the past without analyzing the current status of each company.
Hisense is not the first company to have brought a defensive action in Brazil nor the only one pursuing such litigation at the moment. Acer is trying something similar against Nokia (September 6, 2025 ip fray article). Acer and ASUS are Hisense’s co-defendants against Nokia, though there is a technical difference because Acer and ASUS are computer manufacturers while Hisense makes TVs, which entails that Acer and ASUS are liable not only for standard-essential claims (which cover HEVC decoding) but also for encoding claims (with respect to which there is no FRAND (fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory licensing) obligation under the International Telecommunication Union’s (ITU) rules). Hisense’s TVs merely decode.
The fact that both Acer and Hisense have recently elected to bring their own Brazilian cases shows how significant a battlefield South America’s largest country and economy has become. SEP holders increasingly obtain merits-based PIs in Brazil, which are harder to overturn. InterDigital’s “double whammy” against Disney (also over video patents) is the latest example (September 11, 2025 ip fray article).
São Paulo’s economy is significantly stronger than Rio’s. But SEP enforcement has so far been concentrated in Rio. Apparently Hisense is uncomfortable with the jurisprudence of that court and is therefore betting on São Paulo.